VIDEO DOCUMENTATION
We were very fortunate this year to have a team on site from the Institute for Media Art and Technology in Karlsruhe. Dagmar Cee and Dorothy Brill worked with us daily, under the occasional guidance of Professor Lothar Spree and Martin Emele. The aim is to situate such documentation at the centre of our work at the site. This is not simply because of the visual appeal of the paintings. It is more because the documentation allows us to get closer to a full 'hermeneutic' process in our work. The video records what we decide as we go along. It records our interpretations as they are made, changed and challenged. It also records what the trenches looked like as we dug them. Thus at a later date it will be possible to return to this audio-visual 'diary' and reconsider our decisions. The documentation can be used in later re-interpretation of the site. Over a long project, and long after the project, it will be possible to look back and reconsider, in a continuing circle of interpretation. This later use of the video documentation will only be possible once the filmed sequences are easily accessible and relateable to the data from units and contexts. This is being achieved by coding the video sequences and linking them to the overall database.
The process of filming for the documentation had many practical effects. For example, it increased considerably the flows of information between those working on the project. The very act of having to explain one's thoughts in front of the camera leads to the need to clarify and it focuses discussion and debate. And every evening the team members would tend to cluster round the screen and watch what had been happening during that day. Since we cannot all be on site, and since the site itself increasingly has different areas, the daily video was an important way of keeping everybody informed. We extended this process to the workmen on the site, and filmed their points of view. When translated, these interviews made us realise how inadequate had been our attempts to involve the workmen in the work we are doing on the site.
The ever-present camera eye is important in another way. As each scene is set up and later watched on the monitor, one cannot help but be aware of how constructed is the result. The placing of the camera and the choice of topics and words involve selection and representation. The film is a representation of what is being said about the site, but what is being said is itself a representation. The documentation process exposes and opens up the archaeological process as a representation of a representation of a ...... The video plays an important part in the hermeneutic process.
VIRTUAL REALITY
Professor Heinrich Klotz, the Director of the Karlsruhe Institute for Media Art and Technology, has already developed a 3D computer animation of the site. The potential for extending into full virtual reality at Çatalhöyük is enormous. This prospect, linked to interactive techniques, is being developed by Burghardt Deitzler at the Institute.